Prince kicked off his ‘Welcome 2 Chicago’ 3-night residency at United Center last night (9/24), and his set led to some pretty controversial reviews. Greg Kot, for the Chicago Tribune, wrote, “Prince’s concert Monday at the United Center didn’t really finish, it fizzled.” He’s referring to the fact that after about a two-hour set (one encore included), Prince left the stage and the lights dimmed, implying a second encore. More than a half hour later, after a stagehand spent an exceptionally long time sweeping the stage, the lights came back on and fans began to boo and leave the venue. According to Frank Sennett for Time Out Chicago, his band finally did return for some instrumental songs with the house lights on, and eventually Prince re-joined them on stage to play “1999” and “Little Red Corvette.”

It wasn’t just the encore that demanded criticism though. On this Prince fansite, one commenter complained that he only played his guitar for three songs and “forfeited his ‘Guitar God’ moment of a Purple Rain solo and ushered in a… wait for it… SAXAPHONE SOLO? WTF.” The Roots drummer Questlove (whose band just covered Prince in NYC with Maya Rudolph last week) was in attendance too, and as you can see above, he was tweeting throughout the show.

After the show ended, Prince went to House of Blues for the aftershow, which he’ll do on all three nights of the residency. The residency continues tonight (9/25) and Wednesday (9/26), with Janelle Monaesupporting on the last night.

Prince’s setlist from last night and the full list of his band members and guest musicians are below…

Welcome back to BV Chicago

It appears that you already have an account created within our VIP network of sites on .
To keep your personal information safe, we need to verify that it's really you.
To activate your account, please confirm your password.
When you have confirmed your password, you will be able to log in through Facebook on both sites.

Welcome back to BV Chicago

It appears that you already have an account on this site associated with . To connect your existing account just click on the account activation button below. You will maintain your existing VIP profile. After you do this, you will be able to always log in to http://chicago.brooklynvegan.com using your original account information.